University of Auckland Associate Professor Kelly Burrowes wants to know what vaping will do to the respiratory system. Photo: Louise Ternouth
Researchers are working to find out the long-term health effects of vaping on New Zealand's young people, who are nearly three times more likely to vape than teenagers in Canada, the United States and Australia.
It could be decades before we know definitively what impact it was having on their bodies, but some preliminary research was already causing concern.
In 2019 youth smoking was steadily declining and vaping was drastically increasing.
That was why Kelly Burrowes from Auckland University's Bio Engineering Institute pivoted from researching the effects of smoking tobacco to instead look into the health effects of vaping.
She said there were still plenty of unknowns.
"You know it took sort of 50 years to find out what the link between smoking and health effects really were.
"I would say because vaping has not been around that long, comparatively, it'll be at least another 10 years or 20 years before we see the long-term health effects."
During the past six years the Associate Professor had lead multiple studies to try and find answers, focusing on the lungs and respiratory system.
"Every time you vape, some of that will stay inside your lungs, so the e-liquids that are in vapes are sort of quite an oily substance.
"There'll be a lining of this oil that will stay inside your lungs and actually one of the things that is designed to get rid of that is the process of inflammation.
"It's when you have this inflammation occurring many times a day over many years, which is what leads to disease and tissue breakdown."
With the help of some engineering students, Burrowes created a vaping robot.
This collects the vapour then freezes so it can be tested to see which chemicals it contains.
It found there was at least 30 different flavouring chemicals in each e-liquid, and Burrows said no one knew what the health and safety of those flavouring chemicals was.
They also found some heavy metals in the aerosol - the substance that was inhaled and exhaled from a vaping device.
"So normally the heating coil is made from a mixture of different metals and when that gets to really high temperatures, some of that comes off into the aerosol."
Another study led by Professor Burrowes grew lung cells in a lab and exposed them to e-cigarette vapour.
Some cells died and others broke apart or became more permeable - meaning chemicals could be more easily absorbed into the blood stream.
Over the summer she ran a project with undergraduate students - for a "by youth for youth" perspective on a solution to vaping.
Bachelor of science student Rebecca Thwaites was part of the group and said she had seen a lot of her friends become addicted to vaping.
"I remember even in school people would get really agitated and have to leave class because they need a vape or were getting really stressed out when they've lost a vape.
"They used to bedazzle their vapes. It used to be fun and be like 'oh, this one's pink like it's cute it's mine'."
The group tossed around dozens of ideas about how to tackle vaping addiction, including whether we should follow in Australia's footsteps and make vapes prescription only.
But she said some of the group had visited Australia or had friends living there and found getting a vape was easy.
"We found within 10 minutes you could get an illegal vape. It was so easy you literally walked into a dairy, you paid by cash and they literally sold them under the counter."
Thwaites said young people were targeted by vape companies.
"It looks nice. It tastes nice. It's addictive. It makes you feel good.
"It does look enticing. They're all bright colours. You think 'how can this be harmful when it looks so nice?' It's everywhere."
The group's solution was a design to eliminate the "cool factor" in vaping with a plain, dark green coloured vape in just one flavour, tobacco.
Thwaites said the tobacco flavour had negative connotations for young people, so the group wanted to limit the variety of flavours currently on the market.
"You can have blueberry, raspberry, blueberry ice and there was a regulation that it has to be like maximum of two flavours but even then, there's just so many different variations."
From 1 July there will be a complete ban on disposable vapes in New Zealand and vape retailers would not be able to have displays outside their store.
Dairies and service stations would have to keep the devices out of sight like cigarettes.
Researchers like Burrowes were welcoming those changes and, in the meantime, working on getting answers about what vaping was truly doing to the human body.
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